We are looking for a Senior Level Designer to join our studio. Become a linchpin in transforming our award-winning crafted narrative worlds into their own reality!

Essential Requirements, Qualifications & Such:

8+ years and at least 2 previously shipped titles in a senior level design or environment world building role, with established track record of crafting engaging open world content.
Work directly with the Creative Director on the vision and execution all world environment game spaces.
Preparation (and at times presentation) of level design documentation.
Ability to balance world aesthetics and gameplay needs within set technical limitations.
Deep understanding of first-person combat and exploration survival game mechanics.
Senior ownership of the world map design and its execution pipeline.
Environment and level reviews at multiple stages of implementation to ensure the design execution matches the overall creative vision.
Rapid block-out prototyping for conceptual layout.

Big Pluses:

Applicants with in-depth and proven experience in Unreal Engine 4 will go to the top of the pile.
Familiarity with inXile games and their licensed IP.
Experience with additional aspects of design development: character design, quest & narrative writing, event scripting, and AI design.

Ark, Rust, Conan Xiles, The Long Dark, Oxygen Not Included, DayZ, Subnautica, Miscreated, The Forest, Hurtworld, H1Z1, Unturned, the Hunter: Call of the Wild, Life is Feudal, Astroneer, No Man's Sky, Empyrion, Dark and Light, Valnir Rok, 7 Days to Die, Citatel: Forged with Fire, Osiris: New Dawn, Subsistence, The Isle, Rising World, The Long Dark, Die Young, Next Day: Survival.

Survival games are super popular right now, and if inXile makes a decent game in that vein, it could become their most popular title ever. It could do very well with Fig investments as well - IIRC, Fig's first ever project was an open world survival game by an unknown indie studio.

Please inXile, don't There many other studios doing such kind of games for those who like them - please focus on making 3rd-person RPGs as we love them ! Since so few are making them... that's what your fan love !

Multiplayer or single-player? Obviously we don't know yet, but that will make all the difference in whether or not I care.

I assume this'll be a co-op game at minimum, probably using some of the experience they're getting from implementing Wasteland 3's multiplayer. Maybe this will also be the game to implement the "social features" Fargo had been planning for Wasteland 2. Share button, Instagram integration, in-game Discord chat, etc. That kind of social integration fits the modern survival genre like a glove.

You're probably right. Not interested in multiplayer only games. I don't like playing on someone else's schedule, or someone else's servers. If there is something like a Far Cry style single-player campaign, then we'll talk. My assumption is that this won't be for me.

The ONLY thing that might maybe keep me interested in a co-op game would be for this to be an official Wasteland spinoff. I'd be curious what that looked like. But that alone wouldn't be enough for me to buy it.

Note that I am absolutely fine with the idea of "social integration" in a single-player game, like was originally planned for Wasteland 2. I'd friend list all you guys, compare achievements, compete on leaderboards etc. I just don't want forced multiplayer.

This news coupled with the development of Mage's Tale and Brian Fargo's upcoming retirement isn't a good sign imo, could mean that InXile are preparing to drop the whole "traditional CRPG" focus and instead go for whatever is currently "popular". Get ready for InXile MOBA, InXile multiplayer FPS (Overwatch-like) and InXile card-game

I don't think Fargo was ever opposed to doing those, but they required either money or know-how that inXile didn't have.

But I completely missed this news item, which must be about the same game we're discussing here:

Today, Gumi VR, the Japanese publisher’s VR subsidiary, announced that it’s investing $4.5 million in InXile Entertainment. This bundle of equity investment and project investment funding will go toward, among other uses, an unannounced RPG for Oculus Rift with Touch, HTC Vive, and PlayStation VR. Gumi CEO Hironao Kunimitsu also joins inXile Entertainment’s board.

The unannounced open-world survival RPG, InXile CEO and founder Brian Fargo said, is based on one of the studio’s existing worlds — so it could be riffing off Wasteland, Torment: Tides of Numenera, or The Bard’s Tale (though it could also be Hunted: The Demon’s Forge, a fantasy take on the cover shooter that InXile made for Bethesda Softworks in 2011). Fargo’s interested in open worlds like those found in Ark: Survival Evolved, but InXile wants to add more RPG elements.

“I’ve been fascinated by the social dynamics of open world games, and I’ve wanted to bring our storytelling techniques into this genre and push on the intensity of that experience,” Fargo said over email. “It doesn’t take much imagination to understand how powerful this genre will be in VR.”

At first glance, this may look like a weird partnership. InXile and its forerunners (Black Isle and Interplay) have decades of experience in Western role-playing games, while Gumi focuses on RPG mechanics that work in Asia. But Fargo points out that InXile’s recent VR work went a long way to securing this investment and partnership.

“Gumi’s main focus here is on VR, and it appreciated the quality of the Mage’s Tale and sought us out based on it,” Fargo said. “One of the other great aspects to our partnership is that Gumi may help us bring our franchises into the Asian marketplace, something you need a local partner for.”

The studio will be hiring to help augment its already talented design and development crew.

“We we will be adding staff to help us with uniqueness of making a server-based game,” Fargo said “We’ve already found talented programmers who have created server-based games using Unreal and we’ll have a special talent announcement in the future. We are taking this initiative very seriously and want to bring in the best.”

- VR game for Oculus, Vive, and Playstation VR
- server-based
- similar to Ark: Survival Evolved, but with more RPG elements
- published by Gumi, a Japanese company specialized in free-to-play mobile games
- based on an existing inXile IP

The ONLY thing that might maybe keep me interested in a co-op game would be for this to be an official Wasteland spinoff.

Signs are looking good I don't see them using Bard's Tale or Torment for an open world survival game. And the game could still have a "play alone on a private server" kind of option, like Conan Exiles.

Main studio makes Wasteland 2 (Unity, isometric), then starts moving team members over to Torment (Unity, isometric), and then to Wasteland 3 (Unity, isometric).
New Orleans makes BT4 and Mage's Tale (Unreal, first person, VR), then starts transitioning to this new title (Unreal, first person, VR). If BT4 gets delayed again, this game may slip to 2020 as well. Although survival games go into Early Access really quickly nowadays, so it depends on what you count as a "release".

That makes me think of a fascinating possibility - could BT4 be published by Gumi? Dungeon crawlers are big in Japan, the CEO is on inXile's board of directors, and they've already agreed to publish another multiplatform title for them. Since Gumi is so interested in VR, I suppose it depends on the VR capabilities of BT4.

OK, "server-based". Thanks for confirming multiplayer foolishness. I mean, what else would it have been? But still, good to know for sure.

Wasn't Spore also server based?... and yet it was single player only. IIRC**, the server was used for the marketplace; and possibly as a source for the other life forms encountered.

You're reaching Spore drew creature data from (and transmitted it to) the central servers, but the environmental generation, player data etc. were all handled client-side. The game didn't take place "on the server".

Main studio makes Wasteland 2 (Unity, isometric), then starts moving team members over to Torment (Unity, isometric), and then to Wasteland 3 (Unity, isometric).
New Orleans makes BT4 and Mage's Tale (Unreal, first person, VR), then starts transitioning to this new title (Unreal, first person, VR).

As long as it's just the New Orleans studio making those first-person server VR whatever game, and the main studio still delivers the isometric single-player RPGs we love, I guess I can live with that... I'll just skip the New Orleans ones and buy (or back) the main studio ones. But I really really hope inXile will still make good old single-player isometric story-based RPGs and not move fully to the VR/first-person/hype madness...